Speculation:

• Xi is losing power because his health is deteriorating
• some members of the military loyal to him have been purged
• as with the CCP, nothing is transparent, so nothing is predictable
• some claim (or maybe hope) “maybe power will be handed to Wang Yang” (who doesn’t seem a fan of iron-fisted central rule), but more likely that is wishful thinking

Disclaimer: I’m not a medical person, but I did learn some biology 20 years ago. I’m not competent enough to give a firm opinion, but I’ll try to guess a bit.

• all the listed cancer types affect internal organs
• I notice that skin cancer isn’t rising
• I notice that esophagal, mouth and gastric cancer are not listed (but liver cancer is)
• I conclude that risk of cancer hasn’t risen equally for all cancers
• I guess that toxicity from alcohol or tobacco is not involved, but could play a small role
• several organs involved in digestion are listed, one should look at what people eat & drink
• several reproductive organs are listed, one should look for dysregulation and hormonal unbalance

Overall, I would recommend to look for clues in these directions:

• is there a shift in food / beverage types?
• is there a shift in food / beverage processing (e.g. towards ultra processed)?
• is there a shift in packaging (e.g. different metal for cans, different plastic or more plastic for trays)?
• is there a shift in food preparation (e.g. different cooking methods)?
• is there a shift in calorie intake or gut microbiome (e.g. bacterial species that produce toxins that eventually cause cancer)?
• is there a chemical contamination of food or beverage sources?
• is there a shift towards sedentary lifestyle?

What I notice in the comments of the county officials: some of them claimed “it could not have been prevented, even with radar”.

Here in Eastern Europe, a weather radar makes a full turn in 5 minutes and I think that faster ones exist in fancier places. An SMS takes at most 15 minutes to deliver, with some arriving in seconds and some trailing behind if the network is under load.

Also, I’m sure some US states get even tornados, and are damn quick at sending out alerts about those things… so the diagnosis is “as usual, people ignored a considerable risk”. They had not set up automation. People could have been alerted, tech for that exists already for a decade or more.

Sadly, I’m not surprised.

Both sides have been clearly working on enhanced autonomy for a while now.

At first, it seemed that autonomous targeting would soon remain the only option in face of electronic warfare taking down a majority of drones. (The spectacular footage we’ve seen so far has mostly originated from a small minority of drones that got through. This is changing with fiber optics, of course.)

Then, tactical tricks (flying repeaters) and new guidance methods (fiber optic wire) gave direct guidance a fighting chance again, and somewhat postponed the need for high autonomy…

…but soon enough, an average drone will be capable of much more processing than a super expensive cruise missile from the 1990-ties, and this kind of weapons can be highly autonomous. You can give them the approximate location of a target and tell them to look for something - a ship, a train, an aircraft, a bridge, and of course vehicles with protruding pipes.

It will get nasty and complicated when they get cheap enough to target individual humans, because both common sense and international law insist that humans may be non-combatants and even combatants can surrender. A drone with enough mind to understand will be required to understand this, but there will be a motivation to cut corners. :(

Fortunately “lost” in this case doesn’t mean “killed or wounded”, but “residing in other countries and capable of returning home”.

Of course, if a considerable number of these people remain abroad after war has ended, then it’s a loss indeed.

But already until then, it’s big burden on the state budget (state has the same obligations to the old, but less working age taxpayers to gather income). However, there is also the effect of younger people working abroad sending money to their older relatives who remain home. To some degree, this might counterbalance the loss.

As a person who develops drones, and who has already read the article about a week ago, and given a review of it in another place:

The author’s unit was quite obviously supplied with crappy drones, his description hints of many recognizable issues. Their takeoff failure rate would be considered unacceptable in some circles. Their detonation failure rate hints of sappers erring on the side of caution (sappers want to go home alive). These problems can be solved with factory made munitions and decent quality assurance.

Some of his complaints are organizational. Lacking bomber drones, they wasted FPV drones to destroy stationary / abandoned / disabled vehicles. This is not a tech issue, but an organizational issue.

He’s correct to point out that heavily loaded quadcopters won’t safely take off in adverse weather. I must remind that a catapult launched UAV plane will reliably take off in adverse weather, exceed quadcopters in range and payload capacity, so we can guess that planes taking off from launch tubes will gradually replace quadcopters taking off from grass.

He’s correct to point out that once you go below direct visibility, your 5.8 GHz video link will break. There’s at least 3 solutions around this: an airborne repeater, fiber optic cable and bombing the target from altitude. All 3 solutions are already widespread.

He mentions lack of GPS, compass, inertial navigation and pilots getting lost. This is true, GPS is suppressed on the front and will likely stay suppressed, some drones are cheap and don’t provide the pilot with obvious and simple navigational aids (they should) and some pilots do get lost when navigating (this is unavoidable, but can be reduced).

He mentions need for long training. This is the current reality, but not the reality of a tailor-made combat drone system. Today, people are fighting a war with civilian sports supplies. That’s why pilot training is important to overcome difficulties. In a few years, you can give a ready-made drone system (in a sealed container, with a factory-made warhead) to a random guy or girl from a street in the middle of a storm, and he or she can shoot down a combat helicopter from 10 kilometers distance with it. Just liking firing an NLAW can be learned in 5 minutes (but not mastered, of course), firing a drone will be possible with 5 minutes of instruction in the near future.

Yes, let’s meme a lot, that will help everyone understand what is going on.

Not “back to Syria” but “how to get him back from Syria, where he has presumably fled”, if you read the article.

Going by this article…

https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/30/brothers-still-deny-involvement-18-year-old-sisters-honor-killing

…I would speculate that by sending the letter, Khaled al-Najjar attempts to free his sons of complicity in the crime. Whether they are or aren’t complicit, is for the court to determine. Getting the man back from Syria would be a priority for the court, but given the situation in Syria, this might be difficult to arrange.

The court seems to consider the brothers either plausibly complicit or a flight risk and decided not to free them on bail.

The brothers’ lawyers requested that they be released from pre-trial custody. They have been detained for almost 13 months. Both insist that they “had nothing to do” with their sister’s murder. But the court ruled that they’ll stay in custody until the next hearing in September.

…and…

But the OM [prosecution] believes that the father enlisted his sons to pick Ryan up, drive her to a remote location, and throw her weighted body into the water. According to the OM, the three men killed Ryan because she behaved too Western and “shamed” her family.

This does not seem likely.

There has to exist a reason for Wang Yi opening some cards, but Kaja Kallas is not that reason. Wang Yi does not make uncoordinated statements and Kaja Kallas isn’t attempting to achieve that either.

Somewhere in the CCP political bureau, it was agreed that Wang Yi will send this public signal.

The reason could be something in China, something in Russia, something in Europe or in the US. What is the reason? I don’t know currently, but I’m not the only one solving this puzzle.

As a side note: there is speculation that China may be approaching a change of leader due to Xi experiencing health issues (not a change of leadership in the wider sense - the collegial system of the CCP is considered to be functioning).

Thus, it may be impossible for the Chinese foreign minister to be fully confident of what China’s policy will be in the future.

Obviously, China views it as unacceptable for Russia (its ally and soon enough, practically its vassal) to all-out lose. (The easiest way to not lose, of course, is not starting a war, but that train is long gone and behind the hills.)

Prolonging the war does not eliminate this risk well, however - exhaustion could spread in Russian society and morale could collapse despite the state spewing its propaganda, or the economy could collapse. So, simply propping up Russia by letting them buy the goods they shouldn’t be getting is not a very elegant solution. Direct interference on behalf of Russia would lead to open hostility with the EU, which is currently ambivalent about China.

What remains is nudging Russia to negotiate. But Putin is hard-headed and only willing to negotiate Ukraine’s surrender, on terms which Ukrainians will laugh out of the door.

As for the US being able to focus on China, well I guess they’re a bit concerned about it, but given the mental and organizational capability of the current US leadership, I don’t think Chinese analysts are particularly worried.

Possibly, reverse motivation - the training goal of such an agent would not be nice and smooth output, but shooting down misinformation.

But I have serious doubts about whether all of that is feasible, given the computational cost of running large language models.

Speculation on my part:

Patriot stocks may have been really reduced - by defending Israel during Netanyahu’s adventure against Iran (it could have been smarter to tell Netanyahu not to start).

There is no reason to think that stocks of other weapons (e.g. air to ground missiles, glide bomb units for F-16) have suddenly gone really low. In fact, there is probably a f**kton of them.

Consequently, I suspect that Trump and Putin have made a deal they failed to disclose: Putin promised to refrain from helping Iran (it was an easy promise, he was really low on supplies). Trump promised in return to refrain from helping Ukraine, which he could have easily helped. At best, he got conned, at worst he got to do what he already wanted.

I would advise journalists to ask around: “has the US DoD been ordered to alter criteria for determining what is sufficient supply?” If yes, we’re looking at an excuse. If no, we’re looking at inability.

Both are bad, but inability can be corrected with honest admission and action, Ukraine has a bit of money from other allies to actually buy some US weapons, although they are rushing to make more domestically.

If it’s not inability but an undercarpet deal, then corrections are bit harder to achieve.

But the SBU had followed the pair and had special equipment on hand, the operative said, expecting another attack after the previous blast. “We had certain technical means to block the signals to the telephone,” said the source. When Alexander rang the phones strapped to the bombs to detonate them, the calls did not go through.

That was thoughtful of them. :)

At this temperature, emergency medical departments are guaranteed to be full. Weeks later, an uptick in mortality is registered on stats, without exception.

I think the 38% number is definitely wrong, maybe even wrong by one order of magnitude.

I tried fact-checking and came up with this:

https://providencemag.com/2018/04/what-a-country-immigrants-serve-us-military-well

Few Americans realize that 65,000 immigrants serve in the US military today. That number includes some 18,700 troops who hold green cards (in other words, legal permanent residents who are not yet naturalized citizens). According to the Pentagon, about 5,000 such residents enlist each year.

Since the total number of the US armed forces is around 1.3 million, it follows that 38% is definitely wrong and the correct number of immigrants is likely around 5%.

I think the 38% number originates from service member naturalization stats or service member family stats and has been mis-interpreted. Can’t tell for sure, didn’t hire a spy to find out. :)

P.S. Edit: found a secondary source with similar data:

https://www.usafis.org/can-i-join-the-us-military-as-a-green-card-holder/

Approximately 8,000 Green Card holders join the US military each year and around 35,000 are currently serving on active duty.

Since green card holders aren’t the only variety of immigrant, the number 65 000 seems plausible.

My estimate is that this will result on 410 lawsuits filed per day. :o

I think it’s not a smart move to have 150 000 lawsuits per year over the same question - it’s much preferable to have 1 lawsuit for a whole class of people - defending the rights of everyone in the same situation - and some extra lawsuits for those who want to present a unique take on the matter.

They have, but this does not look like a fiber optic scenario.

Guesses: either:

• autonomous navigation by terrain and compass (assuming that satnav systems are denied), or
• one swarm member using a ridiculously good (satellite?) radio to supply other swarm members with guidance from Ukraine, or
• guidance via Russian mobile phone networks.

Missile silos are sadly, ridiculously hardened. You may have to hit a single door with 10+ drones to get through.

Aircraft are perfect targets, since an aircraft must be light and cannot be hidden underground too easily.

Also, missile silos aren’t being used to attack Ukraine. Knocking one out would have no effect on the safety of people in Ukraine. Aircraft however, are used daily / weekly. Tangible benefit is immediate - less air raids, less missiles fired, less glide bombs dropped.

It would also be sweet if a shortage of radar planes occurred - Russia not knowing what’s happening in its airspace would allow Ukrainian long-range drones to reach where they must.

Clever and economical, and 100% high value military targets. I wish the guys who pulled this off, all the luck they can have. :)

It is possible that Russia’s selection of AWACS planes (about 10 left) decreased even more.

The “sheds” were more like wooden boxes. They had a fake roof, the upper layer of which a mechanism could remove. Between the roof beams - “nests” for drones. This cargo was given for transport to ordinary truck companies. There’s even a video where cops have detained a trucker while drones are taking off from his truck and heading towards Belaya airfield, ordinarily unreachable to Ukrainian drones since it’s 4000 km away. I’m afraid the trucker will be facing some hard times. I hope they understand he was deceived, though, and eventually let him go.